


the safety of others

by propinquitous



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Bedside Vigils, Cuddling & Snuggling, Everybody Lives, Headspace, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Monster (The Magicians), Reading Aloud, Recovery, References to Abuse, References to Addiction, References to Depression, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22981390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitous/pseuds/propinquitous
Summary: Eliot keeps vigil."You need to understand that he - he did this for us, for everyone. He had to take a risk and it worked, but he was hurt real bad, El. He’s - I can’t honestly say that he’s okay. He’s still out."Eliot took a moment to process this information, that Quentin was hurt, which meant he was nearby, but he wasn’t all right, which meant in some ways he was not nearby, and in some ways he was becoming less nearby by the second, and every moment Eliot was laid up and not closer to him was a waste because what if he was never nearby again?
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 49
Kudos: 280





	the safety of others

**Author's Note:**

> first, thanks to **portraitofemmy** for the beta and for all of the processing.
> 
> second, i started this after 5.01 left me with immense unresolved grief. while there are tons of fix-its, i figure there can never be too many places to hold the pain of quentin's death.
> 
> so here's another story where he lives.

_If love is an act, not something we do passively - then isn't the same true of life? Does that make sense? I know it's selfish but I want you here._

Eliot dreamed. Fleeting images, sensations of longing. He moved through them without boundaries or borders, through places he knew and places he’d never seen. He saw pyramids in the distance, the hotel where his high school held prom; he saw a playscape, the swings enormous in his young memory; he saw the falls at Iguazu, even though he’d stayed back when his classmates made the trip from Buenos Aires that summer abroad. Every image had a far off quality to it, like he saw them through a viewfinder or telescope.

His mind eventually settled on familiar places: the Physical cottage, his freshman dorm, the parish hall of his childhood church, where he’d attended vacation Bible school every summer. Of everything, the worst part was home. Expanses of corn and soy stretched out in front of him, endless and green and golden, merging with the horizon in flag-straight lines. He smelled hay, somehow, the dry musk of it in the barn where he'd hidden as a child. There were sounds, too, quiet and humming: tractors running in the distance, diesel engines firing on a loop. Eventually, the house appeared, its whitewashed panels gleaming and new. Eliot floated above it all for a while, waiting to see his skinny teenage self. A few times, he thought he heard footsteps, but no one ever appeared.

After, he mostly dreamt of people. Most of them didn't have faces, which, he thought, was for the best. His longings were mostly limited to bodies, a curve or a plane. More than once he saw Margo, and in his dreams they lay unspeaking, side by side in a California king, her the jetpack on his back. He could feel her small hands curved under his shirt, checking for a heartbeat, could smell the faint floral scent of her perfume. She kissed the knob of his spine and held him tight against her, protective and fierce. He missed her so badly.

Quentin began to appear toward the end, the natural conclusion to his story. He didn't touch Eliot, only looked at him from across the room, smiling in the small way he’d always saved for Eliot. At first, he was a little out of focus, blurry at the edges, hazy in the sunlight of the cottage. The details became clearer over time until Eliot could see the fine hairs of his eyebrows, every pore and subtle wrinkle. Like Margo, Quentin was silent. Even in his dreams, it made his chest ache. He wanted to hear Quentin's voice again, all of its anxious cracks and crevices archived delicately in the silence. 

_I want to stay here with you. I want to feel you, to touch your face and your ribs and reach inside of you and stitch together your injured parts. I love you, I love you so much more than I can ever explain so let me touch you, please, let me have this, let me have you, let me curl up and live in your heart because I have been alone until now._

That Eliot woke up first was the most surprising part of everything that came after.

It was late in the afternoon, the time of day Eliot used to wake up in a haze, his body still processing ethanol, breaking down the bonds between oxygen and carbon and hydrogen like the alcohol had obliterated his memory of the night before. On these days, he'd wake up starving but unable to eat, his hands shaking and his heart beating thunderously against his ribs.

He closed his eyes and did an internal assessment; his heart did not try to beat out of his chest. But he noticed that his head felt heavy, like his sinuses were swollen, stuffed full of cotton, and he allowed his head to list such that his cheek touched the pillow, which was cool and smooth beneath his warm, clammy skin.

It felt good to lay there, to rest. He had shut his eyes against this light for years, the bright but saturated light that meant the sun approached the horizon, an egg yolk yellow, thick and runny and rich.

 _Egg yolks._ For a while, he dozed. He thought of Margo and of the bloody marys they'd make once they had both gotten themselves together, with pepperoncinis and pearl onions and pickled carrots and the vinegar of his favorite hot sauce. He fantasized about a croque madame with mustard, the good, whole grain one that he kept hidden in the back of the fridge. He'd share it with Margo, but only if she helped him grate gruyere for the mornay. He could practically taste the salt of the ham, the nuttiness of the cheese and the way it would soak into the crunchy bread, which he'd fry instead of toast, because what was the point of anything if the bread - sourdough, naturally - wasn't buttery and crisp?

He would make one for Quentin, too, if he was around.

The thought of the bread made Eliot's mouth water and it was this that finally motivated him enough to open his eyes. He tried to reach for his phone, which wasn't on the nightstand and confused him, and felt a profound weakness in his arm, like his elbow was a rusty hinge and his hand was an old, heavy door. He held his hand out and watched it quiver and he had half a mind to worry about it, except it wasn’t the first time, and would not likely be the last.

Then he moved to sit up and agony ripped into his middle, searing almost like a burn, like the time he'd drunkenly tried to take cookies out of the oven without mitts when he was twenty-one and living alone for the first and last time. It was so intense, all-consuming of his nervous system that for a paralyzing few seconds, a tunnel encroached around his vision and flared into purple and green static.

He laid back. Once his vision steadied, he managed to take stock of where he actually was. It was not the cottage, real or otherwise; there were no lush fabrics, no worn cushions beneath his head or hips. The sheets were white, never his style, and upon closer inspection were jersey knit instead of his preferred sateen.

Above him, the fluorescent lights butted up against the warm sun and made his skin look cirrhosis-sallow, which was worrying but, he conceded, not necessarily surprising. He raised his arms to check for bruises and saw that there were IV lines attached and he thought _Oh good_ , because that meant, at least, that he was hydrated.

Infirmary, then. A too-long night and maybe too many drinks but that was okay, really. Familiar territory. His throat didn’t burn like he’d had his stomach pumped, which seemed like a good thing.

Another moment passed before he thought to examine the source of the pain in his gut. Carefully, he drew back the thin blanket, grimacing at the tacky mint green of his gown before he lifted it. He frowned. An enormous bandage covered his belly, held to his body by gauze wrapped around his waist. He delicately began to pick at the weak willed medical tape until -

"El?" He looked up and saw her in the doorway, in a fuzzy, hot pink coat and dark jeans, her hair pulled up in an unfamiliar topknot.

"Hey, Bambi," he said. His voice cracked, dry and brittle. He could hardly remember the last time he’d seen her in jeans and he almost commented on it, but then he saw the way her mascara had smudged around her bottom eyelid, like she’d been rubbing her eyes or crying or worse. In her hand she held a paper coffee cup from a dispenser, like the ones he'd only ever seen in hospital dramas, _House_ and _Grey's Anatomy_ and _Nurse Jackie_.

"Where are we?" Eliot asked. She took a step toward him and he could practically hear her tell herself, _One foot in front of the other_. Then she was setting the coffee cup on the side table and sitting down on the narrow bed beside his hip and looking at him like she couldn't believe he was real.

"Eliot, it's," she said. It sounded effortful, like the words were heavy in her throat and to speak was to lift them up and out of her mouth. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. This seemed to settle her. "It's really you?"

He tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"You don't remember?" Her eyes were wide and, he realized, afraid.

It was like recalling a dream. There were half images and fleeting feelings, mostly of terror and anger and regret. Then, the resignation, the knowledge that he would never truly be alive again. That he would never eat another croque madame, that he would never make another hangover breakfast for the people he loved most in the entire world, the only people with whom he'd ever wanted to share his expensive mustard.

"Oh, fuck," he said, and did not remember anything after that.

* * *

Dimly, he heard muddy voices, laid low underneath the sound of his own labored breathing, the beep of a heart monitor, the click of dress shoes and high heels against linoleum.

"Eliot, can you hear me?" Lipson's voice came clear through the others, a sudden sunbeam in the fog. He nodded and blinked against the pen light she flashed in his eyes.

"What happened?" His voice was even thinner than it had been before. He tried to cough, to clear his throat, but found that he did not have the strength.

"You had a seizure." Lipson said. She clicked off the light and sighed. "A short but severe one. You lost consciousness for a couple of minutes."

Eliot squinted. "What, why would," he couldn't find his words, the weight of sedation or his hangover or whatever it was that pressed down on him like atmospheric pressure. Lipson stood up and bent to check one of the many monitors connected to his body.

"We don’t know," she sighed and looked at him with a sort of sympathy he did not know she could possess, the way his middle school counselor had looked at him when she’d pulled him into her office and asked about Logan Kinnear and did he understand what those words meant. "That thing, we don’t know what all it did to your body. We’ll keep you here for a week or two for observation, in case the seizures get worse or if there are any other complications. The only thing obviously wrong with you right now is severe dehydration and a bit of malnourishment, because I guess demigods don’t care much about nutrition." Lipson shrugged and straightened, crossing her arms.

He frowned. Briefly, he considered asking questions, but couldn’t think of anything that seemed worth the energy. He had been, for all intents and purposes, mostly dead, and now he was not. That was enough for now.

"Can I see Margo?" he said.

Lipson nodded. "I’ll let her know you’re stable."

Eliot let out a long breath and leaned back against the too-firm pillow, closing his eyes. He drifted off, still exhausted and drained and a million other words that swam through his mind.

"Hey, babe," Margo said. Her voice was warm, honey on a wound, cleansing and sweet, and did not betray any of her initial suspicion. She reached forward from her perch on a green vinyl armchair and took his hand. "How’re you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by a truck," he said. "Or, I guess, like an angry toddler used my body as a murder marionette. You know, half dozen one way." Eliot attempted to smile and squeezed her hand. His grip was still weak, his knuckles limp against her palm.

Margo’s frown upturned into a brief smile and the tear that made its way over her cheek sparkled, somehow, in the fluorescent light that had been lowered as the day passed into evening.

He wondered - "How long have I been here?"

She bit her lip. "Four days? You were in an induced coma for the first two, because of the surgery."

"And what did I need surgery for?"

Here, Margo winced. "I’m sorry," she said. He did his best to squeeze her hand. "I - the only way to get that thing out of you was to hurt you. I should’ve, aimed somewhere different, I guess, but you’re so fucking tall and I had to act fast and? So, axe, meet stomach, meet major surgery and medically-induced coma."

"Jesus," Eliot breathed out. He briefly thought to feel relief that he hadn’t managed to get a look at this wound before. "What about - what about everyone else?" Then he thought, no, not everyone, there were important things to say and apologies to make but none of them were important as - "Where’s Q?"

Margo’s chin quivered and she looked down at her hands before shaking her head and facing him again. He knew that look, the one where her mouth fought a frown and drew a wrinkle between her brows. It was the one she’d given him when she admitted to making the fairy deal; it echoed her expression when he told her she couldn’t be king. It was the face she made when she was angry and hurting and had to tell the truth.

"You need to understand that he - he did this for us, for everyone. He had to take a risk and it worked, but he was hurt real bad, El. He’s - I can’t honestly say that he’s okay. He’s still out."

Eliot took a moment to process this information, that Quentin was hurt, which meant he was nearby, but he wasn’t all right, which meant in some ways he was not nearby, and in some ways he was becoming less nearby by the second, and every moment Eliot was laid up and not closer to him was a waste because what if he was never nearby again?

He tried to sit up. There was less pain in his middle now which could only mean they had him on a morphine drip or something stronger, or maybe it was just his fear and preemptive grief, because the pain before had been unbearable and now - now he could sit up, propelled by the thought of losing Quentin.

"I need to see him, Margo, let me - take me to him." He said this with an urgency with which, before this, before he had been possessed and almost ended the world, he had only begged his father not to use his belt.

"I’m so sorry, babe, you can’t."

"Why not?"

Margo wiped her eyes and briefly Eliot felt a surge of rage at the thought of her being upset, like she had the right when she had not _lost_ \- but he stopped himself, took a deep breath and tried to remember she knew him better than he knew himself. She said, "A, you need to stay in bed for now, your body is wrecked. And B, there's nothing you can do for him. Lipson thinks that seeing him like he is will do you more harm than good."

"She's wrong, I have to, I need to see him."

Margo looked at him for a long, quiet moment. It was not the piteous gaze of Lipson or of his middle school counselor or later, of the first boy he’d loved who’d pronounced him too clingy, even though Eliot had never even gotten around to telling him that he had, in fact, loved him. It was Margo, her wide eyes like the cartoon deer for which he’d named her, that first fall at Brakebills when they’d slept in each other’s beds on the rare occasions that they were able to sleep, imploring and full of love and not a little bit of frustration.

He looked back at her with his eyes, whatever they were, he couldn’t know. We can never see our own eyes when they look at someone else and the thought was comforting, somehow, that she would always see him differently than he saw himself.

"Eliot," Margo sighed, resigned. Even now, she was his partner in crime, and he knew she would help him.

"Margo, _please_ ," he said.

She sighed again and took her hand back. "Only if you eat these damn peaches," she said, and held up the small hermetically sealed cup that he had not noticed on the bedside table.

Later, in the light between the moon and dim fluorescents of the nurses station, Margo led Eliot to Quentin’s room. Or rather, she pushed him, because he was not yet strong enough to walk, and even to lean on a cane risked further damage to his torn muscles and viscera, damaged by axes and sixteen hours of surgery as they were. He thought to argue that he could do it himself, but realized that he did not know where Quentin was, and that his arms were still too weak to push the wheels, which he learned when Margo gave him the opportunity to prove a point and he found he could not even propel himself four feet forward.

Quentin’s room was on the same floor, in another ward. He was no longer in the ICU, which Eliot thought had to be a good thing.

"Okay," Margo said, and pushed open the door to room 337. Her arm drifted over Eliot’s shoulder to do so.

What struck him first were the sounds. Quentin hadn’t been as lucky as Eliot, who had been able to breathe on his own, so there was a tube down his throat, secured with tape and attached to a ventilator. It made a gentle whirring sound that reminded Eliot of Fillorian clockwork, providing an undercurrent of bass tones to which the heart monitor sang its shrill, staccato song.

Quentin’s face was covered in small cuts, a wider one curving up from behind his ear and up over his chin and another cresting over his temple before it disappeared beneath a bandage that covered his right eye. His left arm was in a cast from just above his elbow and down over his thumb. And these were only the things Eliot could see; he didn’t know what might be beneath the polyester of his gown or the cotton of the thin hospital sheets.

His hair was lank and greasy, his beard coming in too thick near his cheekbones. He was visibly thin, his usually sturdy wrists reduced to knobby joints and his clavicles protruding like broken branches. Eliot realized that such malnourishment must be the result of the months and the moments that led to this, rather than anything to do with his current state - that is, half-dead in a hospital bed.

In his own way, Quentin had been possessed, too.

Eliot almost turned around. It felt like a violation, somehow, as though Quentin was too vulnerable to consent to Eliot’s observation. In the end, the thought of leaving him alone was too much. He reached back to hold onto Margo’s wrist.

"Will you stay with me awhile?" he said. He did not tilt his chin back to look at her but felt the smallest movement as she nodded.

So they stayed. That night, and then the next. Eliot sat silently by Quentin’s bedside, jumping at each twitch of his eyelid or finger. The second night, he mustered the courage to reach forward and take Quentin’s hand. He’d half thought it would be cold, and Eliot realized that he was already beginning to think of Quentin as dead. It was a protective thought, the sort of notion that Eliot was desperately familiar with - my father will never love me, why bother; they’re going to hurt Taylor anyway, why fight; Quentin is already dead, why hope. He forced the thought down. He was long past needing to protect himself from wanting things to get better.

By the third night, he had enough strength in his upper body to use a cane, and he told Margo to go home.

"Please get some rest," she said as she gathered her things that evening.

He nodded. He was able, then, to stand and hold her close, to feel his full, bony height for the first time in what felt like forever. "I’ll try."

She looked up at him and touched his cheek. Then she was gone and Eliot was taking slow steps down the long blue-yellow yet not green hallways to Quentin’s room.

When he walked in, he saw a man with dark hair in dark blue scrubs - a nurse? A nurse - standing over Quentin. For a moment, he froze, unsure of whether to turn around or clear his throat to bring attention to himself or if he should walk in and act as though nothing was wrong. But the tap of his cane had long since given him away and the nurse turned around to face him and Eliot was struck immediately by a sense of ease, the man’s face familiar in its heavy brow and eyes that squinted when he smiled and said -

"I’m James. I take it you’re Eliot?"

Eliot nodded, frowning.

"Dr. Lipson said to expect you. Will you help me change the sheets? It’s easier with two people." At what must have been Eliot's obvious confusion, he said, "It's a little too delicate for magic."

And of course it was, because if Eliot knew anything now, it's that magic was beyond anyone's control. All the evidence laid before him in a broken body in a hospital bed.

So he stood across the bed from James and kept Quentin’s limp body on its side while he rolled up the sheets. Quentin’s hair fell across his face in a way that Eliot found achingly familiar, that echoed another lifetime of lie-ins, of mornings in the damp light of a house that still existed somewhere in a forest in another world. He swallowed the feeling as he turned Quentin over, away from him, always away, it seemed, and pulled up his side of the bedding while James steadied him. When they repeated the motion to fit the new sheets over the small bed, Eliot avoided looking at Quentin’s face.

Eliot took ahold of the fresh pillowcase and shook it out.

"Like this," James said, taking the pillowcase from Eliot and flipping it inside out. He reached inside and grasped the two corners, then used his encased hands to grab the corners of the pillow and flip the case over it. "See? No shaking."

"Thank you," Eliot said, and tried to smile. He took the pillow back from James so that he would not be tasked with the delicacy of holding up Quentin’s head while they slipped the new pillow underneath.

Still, he could not help but observe Quentin’s face. The smaller cuts had begun to heal, though only just, the magic in their making undoubtedly slowing the process. The skin around his uncovered eye was dark and he could see the leach of bruising from beneath the bandage meaning that the covered eye was even worse. It occurred to him that no one had yet mentioned if Quentin had lost vision or even the eye itself. 

"Has anyone showed you how to bathe him yet?" James asked. Eliot started.

"No," Eliot said, "I’m not - we’re not," he tried, and found that he could not find the words to describe what he and Quentin were not, as if they had not once been everything to each other. "I’m not sure it’s appropriate," he finally settled on. His own voice sounded lame in his ears.

"Well," James said, the small smile on his face radiating sympathy so bright Eliot half thought to shut his eyes against it. "I’d rather have a loved one help than it be left to strangers. Would you let him take care of you?"

"Of course." Eliot did not have to think about it.

James nodded and led Eliot to the bin full of rags and soap and a pail of water before he could resist. 

"Start with the face," James said, and demonstrated the gentle way he should run the rag over his face, making sure to get behind the ears and under the jaw. This seemed to take a long time, until all of a sudden James was handing Eliot a fresh rag and motioning him toward Quentin’s chest.

"I’ll let you handle his armpits," James said congenially. 

Eliot swallowed as James pulled the gown off of Quentin’s upper body and was struck immediately by the hairiness of him - had he always been like this? Eliot wondered, even though he knew of course he had, the dark hair over his arms had been one of his favorite things, back - back when he was allowed to have favorite things about Quentin’s body. He bit his lip hard and lifted Quentin’s relatively uninjured right arm to wash beneath it.

Then he felt tears rising behind his nose and cresting behind his eyes and he had to step back.

"I’m sorry," he said, to Quentin or to James he didn’t know.

"It’s okay," James said. He stood beside Eliot and patted his back. "Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll finish up?"

Unable to do anything else, Eliot sat. He watched as James finished the gentle bath, looking away when he necessarily moved between Quentin’s legs as though to allow him a single piece of dignity or privacy or some other sentiment that Eliot was long past.

"You know," James said as he finished his delicate work and dressed Quentin again, "some people say it’s good to read to comatose patients. He might be able to hear you."

Eliot tried to smile at him as he left. He considered this, the notion of reading, of trying to speak to Quentin at all, for the rest of the night, in which he did not sleep but he did execute a hundred or more silent conversations. By dawn he made his way back to his own room to rest, because facing the yellow daylight was too much after his bluegreen nights.

The next night, when James made his rounds, he came armed with a wash basin and shaving cream. Eliot watched as he smoothed it over Quentin’s jaw, feeling what he thought might be jealousy gently bubble at the juncture of his clavicles. But it couldn’t be jealousy, which would be ridiculous, because James was just taking care of Quentin because it was his job.

He realized, then, that he wanted to take care of Quentin. It was his job. It was the least he could do.

He cleared his throat. James’ hand stilled where it held Quentin’s face, just so, by the temple. Eliot remembered that he had kissed Quentin there, once, a thousand times, in another life, _good morning_ and _goodnight_ and _I’m sorry_ and _you’re a good father_ and _you are everything_ , all of it condensed down into the place where his lips touched the line of Quentin’s hair, near his eyebrow. The skull is thin, there, Eliot knew. It was a delicate place to kiss someone.

James held out the razor to him. Eliot stayed silent as he accepted it, nodding only as James took a step back.

Taking care looked like this: the scrape of a safety razor against Quentin's neck, the smell of bleach and vague scent of unscented laundry detergent. It was the steps Eliot took back to allow the nurses and the doctors to do their care, to check IV lines and change catheters and look for signs of infection. It was the switching of rags between washing Quentin's fragile eyelids and moving down to his chest. 

Taking care was asking Margo to bring him _The Song of Achilles_ , which Eliot read in undergrad during a brief stint in which he had found himself for the first time able to read for pleasure, but only love stories, and only those that made him cry, from happiness or sadness or something else altogether. 

Because now, in the hospital, where Eliot had survived and Quentin still might not, he wanted to hurt, to feel something deeper than his fear and his worry, which were numbing agents. It seemed an acceptable substitute to read a book that made him ache all the way down, that made him weep and hide his face in his hands, an acceptable substitute for shaking hands and stolen pills and another seizure.

Eliot thought that Quentin would agree.

And so taking care began to look like this: the lights turned down and visiting hours over, Eliot curled up in a vinyl armchair pushed close to the hospital bed, so close that he could see the rise and fall of Quentin's chest, that he could count the beats in between his breaths and confirm that his breathing was indeed regulated by a machine that drew air in in exactly two second intervals, pushing and pulling his diaphragm with exacting precision. The dimmed blue light from the monitors fell over Eliot's brow and down over the book that he read outloud.

 _"I will never leave him,"_ Eliot read on a Tuesday. _"It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth."_

He paused to look up and observe Quentin's sleeping face. The bruises on Quentin's cheeks had begun to fade, their plum-dark color giving way to a sickly yellow-green. He took a deep breath. He returned to the book.

_"As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong."_

And here his throat closed and he could not stop himself from reaching for Quentin's steady hand.

_"’Patroclus,’ he said. He was always better with words than I."_

Suddenly filled with an immense, overwhelming and too-bright hope, Eliot looked up, hoping to see Quentin's eyes, his favorite dark honey-amber color shaded in the squint of his brow when he smiled or frowned or sometimes, even, when he just _was_. He longed for his voice, that he hadn't gotten to hear yet, not even in his dreams. He wanted to hear his own name in Quentin’s mouth, even just _El_ , the single syllable that was really only a letter and was not, Eliot thought, too much to ask, even if Quentin said it with the weight of a prayer. That couldn’t be helped.

But Quentin didn't stir.

It was almost impossible to keep reading after that. Eliot’s voice began to stick behind his tongue and he rarely finished a sentence without stopping to catch his breath.

But this was life, now. It would not be life forever. 

So taking care was living the next day, and the next. It was finally changing Eliot’s hospital gown for a soft henley that did not clash so badly with proper trousers but which did not require buttons, which his quivering hands could still not quite handle. It was finally, at last, looking in the mirror, and remembering that he needed to shave, too, and asking Margo to bring conditioner, and cologne, too, which he was not allowed to wear in the hospital but which he sprayed on his shirt, only just, only in the courtyard, so that he would smell like himself when Quentin woke up.

Over the course of a week, Eliot finished _The Song of Achilles_ much more quickly than he thought himself capable of doing. He did not know what else to read, but could not think of what else to do, and so when he found a time-worn copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_ in the waiting room, he took it without asking if it belonged to anyone. He had not read it when it was assigned in high school, but he remembered that the ending was sad, and that was enough.

That evening, after he helped James change the sheets, he curled up tightly into the armchair that had become his post. The book was small in his hands, a pocket paperback. He felt larger than he had in days, and thought it was a good sign that he was perhaps growing back into his own body.

For a while, he did not read, instead inspecting the book with the careful consideration he thought, for whatever reason, he felt it deserved. He noted that the thick pages were yellowed, the corners bent. There was a woodcut of the Bastille on the third page, small and grainy, and the chapter headings were in all capital letters. It was old, probably older than him, and it was comforting to think of all the people that had held it before him.

At last, he opened to book one. _Recalled to Life_ , he read silently, smiling a little before he turned the page to begin, _"It was the best of times, it was the worst-"_

For the first time in many weeks, he laughed. "I'm sorry," he said to Quentin, who couldn't hear him. "You'd hate this, I know you would. But it's all I have." He hoped Quentin understood.

And so he finished the introduction, and the chapter, and got twenty-four pages in before the words began to blur and the letters began to change places like they always used to do. He closed the book and held it to his chest.

"Please wake up," he said, and only the beep of Quentin's heart monitor replied. Eliot sat with his hands in his lap and watched Quentin sleep, and when it occurred to him that Quentin was not, in fact, sleeping, he moved to the small sofa and curled up on his side.

A few days after that, Eliot sat reading by the low light of Quentin’s bedside table. It was late, after ten, and after James had made his final rounds. By then they had removed the ventilator, which to Eliot seemed like a good thing but which no one had confirmed. It left the room mostly silent, though the fluorescents still buzzed low and insistent underneath the quiet.

 _A Tale of Two Cities_ was taking much longer to read, but Eliot found that he had begun to enjoy it. He liked Sydney, with his rakish charm and hard-edged competence, and felt moved by the plight of a man who loved someone that could never love him back, which he did not expect to feel.

Inevitably, perhaps, it made him think of what might happen if Quentin woke up. There were so many things left to say, words he had tucked behind his ribs after he had found them, that day, trapped in his mind. There were apologies and confessions to be made, but he did not know how he would say them. He could not conjure a performance in his mind. He realized that he wanted, more than anything, to hear Quentin’s voice. He wanted to listen to him explain the nuances of Fillorian politics, to hear the way his voice quivered when he was truly excited. He wanted desperately to laugh with him again, to lean against him and smell his cheap peppermint shampoo.

He thought of that scent as he read.

 _"All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and still have the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me,"_ a pause, a breath, the constriction of his throat, _"heap of ashes that I am, into fire."_

Eliot had to stop, then, and collect himself, to wipe his eyes and clear his throat and calm his unsteady breath. He reached and took Quentin's sturdy hand in his, sighing as he did. Quentin made him feel so elegant, like maybe he was something precious, and it wasn’t fair, because Quentin didn’t even have to try.

And it wasn’t _fair_ Eliot’s desperate heart insisted, that Quentin was barely alive and that Eliot had to witness it and it wasn’t fair, not at all, that Eliot was alive and Margo was alive and everyone else they knew was still alive but Quentin, with his stuttering and unsteady hands and his bright, sure magic, who was braver than the rest of them, so brave, in fact, that he could barely be called alive, that he was -

"I thought you couldn't read."

Eliot didn't look to him right away, so sure he was that he was dreaming or hallucinating or worse. But Quentin was there, his uninjured eye blinking against the dim light as he shifted beneath the sheets.

"Q?" Eliot said, that single syllable, his favorite sound.

"I think so," Quentin said, and against all odds, the next sound from his gentle mouth was a laugh.

"Hold on, I'm - I have to tell them you're awake," Eliot stammered. Disbelief still hung around him in a thick fog and he could hardly let go of Quentin's hand.

Later, Eliot would not remember who he found or what he told them; he would not remember what they did or how long it took before he was allowed to see Quentin again. The clearest image in his mind, days and months later, was of Quentin, awake and upright in bed while he ate ice from a small plastic cup. 

"Can I come in?" Eliot asked from the doorway.

"Please."

As Eliot approached, he found that he did not know where to sit or what to say, and for a minute he stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed, admiring the lines around Quentin's mouth as he crunched, a little obnoxiously, on the ice.

"Hey," Quentin said, as though trying to get Eliot's attention, as if he had ever lost it. His voice was hoarse in a way Eliot knew, the sound of weeks' of disuse.

Eliot felt tears well, the pressure almost unbearable behind his eyes. For a fleeting moment, he thought to stem them; his nails dug half-moons into his palms and absurdly, he thought of crescent rolls at the dinner table when he was eight years old, of his dad’s voice telling him to straighten up and elbows off the table and that hair sure is getting long, boy - and the way, the way he’d wanted to cry then, but he hadn’t, because it wouldn’t have done.

For most of his life, Eliot had hidden his tears; he had pushed them back and sat up straight. But if he was making this decision, whatever it was - to be better, true, _braver_ \- then he might as well start with this. 

So he knelt beside the bed, held onto Quentin’s hand, and cried for a very long time.

Because Quentin was only himself, he held tightly to Eliot; because he must have been exhausted, he stayed quiet for longer than he might have under better circumstances. Eliot, eyes closed and pressed against the back of Quentin’s hand, couldn’t bear to look up. He wanted to hold Quentin's hand with the delicacy he deserved, to treat him with romance and curl his fingers under Quentin's like an antique suitor, but could only grip it with the ferocity of his longing, raw and needy and ugly.

Everything he'd felt over the previous weeks came pouring out of him - all the sleep he'd lost, the pain in his gut and in his knees and behind his eyes. He cried for the man he hadn't lost, and the parts of himself that he had. He cried for what Quentin must have felt, the pain he had been in; he cried for the time they had lost, and the precious second chance that sat before them.

Above all, he cried for the love he had withheld, and for the love he didn't deserve.

Still, amidst his tears, he felt something small and bright in the distance. He could not help but wonder if love was something that truly had to be earned, or if maybe the point was that no one really deserved it. It occurred to him that it was a decision, to love someone, not something helpless, like maybe part of you saw a part of them and knew that you would be better if you put your love down onto them, and so you did, even when they didn't deserve it.

Quentin could hold Eliot's love. Eliot could give it to him, this time. He could make that decision.

At last, he looked up to meet the gaze of Quentin's lone eye. There were tears on his face and the small furrow of his brow, which Eliot loved, had always loved, was deep.

"Hey," Quentin said again, a little weak, and tugged on Eliot’s hand. "C’mere."

Before Eliot could give himself a chance for doubt, he climbed into the bed beside him. There was hardly enough room for Eliot in the narrow hospital bed, let alone Quentin’s smaller but still fully-grown, solid frame. But it didn’t matter, because Quentin was here, and Quentin was alive. Eliot curled around him like an oversized ampersand, the heading to Quentin’s body of text.

He pressed his face into Quentin’s neck, against the skin that he had so delicately shaven. He couldn't stop himself from kissing Quentin there, didn't even think about the implications because he could think only of conveying his most tender feelings, of connecting with the reality of Quentin, his skin and his stubble, his muscles and tendons and beneath it all, his pulse, the very beat of his heart.

Quentin wrapped his uninjured arm around his shoulders and the gesture wrung another sob from Eliot's chest. He tucked in more closely to Quentin, tugging their bodies together so that they touched in as many places as possible, as if he could draw Quentin into himself and protect him, like he could build a house out of his own bones, somewhere Quentin would always be safe.

Suddenly, Eliot was acutely aware of their position, of its implications, its assumptions. He withdrew his face from the crook of Quentin’s neck, settling it on the pillow beside him. He did not resist the urge to reach forward, however, and rest his hand on Quentin's cheek.

"Will you talk to me?" Quentin said quietly. Only then did Eliot realize that he had not yet spoken.

"You've been unconscious for almost three weeks," he said. "What do you remember?"

Quentin grimaced. He took his hand from Eliot's arm and touched his own temple, running his fingers over the wound there before landing on the bandage that still covered his eye. "I remember everything," he said.

"I won't press you," Eliot promised, because he was the sort of person who made promises now. "Not here. But it bears saying, I think, at least a thousand times - that," he swallowed the tears that threatened to overtake him again, his throat burning with them. "I'm so glad you're here."

Quentin squeezed Eliot's hand and when he frowned again his chin quivered and his eye, the one that was not covered in a bandage, teared up. "Yeah," he said, "me too."

Eliot rubbed his thumb over the ridge of Quentin's cheek. His skin was soft from the unscented moisturizer James had told him to apply, and which Eliot knew he would have to pester Quentin to continue using, because he was not the sort of person who would moisturize if left to his own devices.

"What are you smiling about?" Quentin said. 

"I'm," Eliot began, and suddenly realized that there would be time for words later, that Quentin had a _later_ , and that what he needed right now was to use his hands and his lips and his body to be close. "Is it okay if I kiss you?"

Because they were, in so many ways, the same, Quentin didn't respond with words. He pulled Eliot in, the angle awkward but everything Eliot had ever dreamed. His lips were soft and giving, and Eliot realized that he would have to pester Quentin about using lip balm, too. He smiled again, into their kiss this time, and felt the knot that had come to constitute his chest loosen at last.

"You should rest," Eliot said when he pulled away. He kept his hand on Quentin's face.

"I know, but I don't want you to go."

"I won't. I won't go, Q."

Quentin nodded against his palm and closed his eyes. Eliot stayed curled up beside him, counting each of Quentin's breaths as he dozed, until James came in on his evening rounds and gently bullied him onto the sofa.

The next morning, Quentin woke up. It was as momentous as it had been before, the most quotidian act suffused with more meaning than Eliot could ever explain. Eliot's breath caught in his throat as he watched Quentin stir, as he smacked his lips and turned to give a weak smile.

"I'm so gross," Quentin laughed, rubbing his hand over his stubbled face.

"I can give you a bath," Eliot said without thinking, so overjoyed to have Quentin here and alive that he forgot what all it meant. "They taught me how to do it, while you were under," he explained. "I’m supposed to ask - do you want to do any of it yourself?"

"Do you think you could help me shower?"

Eliot nodded. "Of course, whatever you want."

This is what healing looked like: standing outside of the shower until Quentin quietly said his name, then quickly stripping his own clothes before stepping in. It was helping him back into bed and putting a towel behind his head so his hair did not soak the pillow.

Later, healing will be listening to discharge instructions, it will be going to the pharmacy for antibiotics and painkillers and Abilify and Wellbutrin. It will be sitting next to Quentin while he looks for a new therapist, and agreeing that he needs to find one, too. It will become driving them both to physical therapy appointments and it will be lots of vegetables and chicken broth and a new water filter.

Healing will be practical. It will be support group meetings and appointments and phone calls and coming to understand that possession was not, in fact, the worst thing that ever happened to Eliot. It will be long nights where neither of them can sleep and they cling to one another, Eliot’s head on Quentin’s chest or the opposite, whoever has the more steady heart providing the baseline for them both.

One day, healing will be relapse when Eliot panics in the grocery store and can’t stop himself from buying a bottle of wine, which he will finish in the car, and then he will call Quentin crying because a bottle of wine never used to make him this drunk but it will, then, because Eliot does not drink anymore and a bottle of wine is actually quite a lot for most people. Quentin will come and get him, and Eliot will cry, and they will try again. Healing will be an iterative process.

Quentin will find that surviving does not make it easier to live. There will be days when he cannot get out of bed, and nights when Eliot will find him sitting alone in the dark of the kitchen with his head in his hands as he sobs. On those days, healing will be trying to sleep even when he doesn’t want to, resetting routines and changing the sheets. Healing will be extra appointments and medication adjustments and reckoning with what it truly meant to die.

Healing is forward motion, a change in tense. It will not be easy, but it will come.

For now, though, healing is just the two of them in a hospital room. That day, after Quentin woke up for the second time, it looked like Eliot pressing a kiss to Quentin's forehead. Healing was taking his place in the uncomfortable chair that he had come to know so well, and looking at Quentin, with his bruises and bandages and the parts of him that were now missing, and seeing his future stretched out in front of him in the shape of Quentin waking up, every day.

Quentin picked up the book from his nightstand, and that morning, healing was the sound of his voice and the smile on his face and the words, "Let's finish this story."

**Author's Note:**

> Look, we are not unspectacular things.  
> We’ve come this far, survived this much. What  
> would happen if we decided to survive more? To  
> love harder?  
> What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, _No_.  
>  _No_ , to the rising tides.  
> Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the  
> land?  
> What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain  
> for the safety of others?  
> Ada Limón, _Dead Stars_


End file.
